I was thinking...

Will they start turning in to moons? I mean..the bigger "astroids" in the rings should start "collecting" the smaller parts and turn in the biger and biger parts?

But...Im a newbee at Astronomy

Thx for any answers.

Welcome to the board imax!

I'm not an astronomer but IIRC, Saturn's rings formed due to gravitational effects from Saturn pulling apart larger objects. Many of Saturn's small moons (known collectively as "Shepard Moons") use their gravitational influence to keep the material in the ring formation we see today. Because of all of these gravitational interactions the rings cannot combine into a larger moon (I think any dust gained by the Shepard Moons is countered by the loss of mass due to tidal forces from Saturn.)

Hope that helped!

Thanks! Wee! That have been bothering me for some time...

Im sure I will come up with more questions now that Im taking astronomy in school

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The A, B, C and D rings of Saturn lie within the planet's Roche limit, where it is impossible for large bodies to exist. Therefore I do not expect that the material in the rings would be able to form a satellite of any substantial size.

Aren't the Rings of Saturn a temporary event? Like Jupiter's Big Red Spot? I know that the Big Red Spot is just a storm in the atmosphere...a really REALLY REALLY big storm. I remember reading that within a few million years or so, the rings will fall to Saturn...but im not too sure if that is true.

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...because the tidal forces are so great they'd pull a moon apart.

Hello imax!

Answer: No, the rings of Saturn will no coalesce into moons, because the differential gravitational pull between the near side and the far side of such a moon would tear it apart again.

Instead, the future of Saturn's rings is oblivion. The ring particles are banging into each other and slowing down in their rotation, which means that over the next 100 million years, the particles will spiral into Saturn leaving no rings at all!

In about a billion years, Triton will break up into fragments because it is slowly spiralling inward towards Neptune (its on a retrograde orbit), so in about a billion years, Neptune will be the glorious ringed planet of the Solar System.

If the rings are only temporary features we might as well get up there and start mining them!

The rings could supply water to Mars, The Moon, dry asteroid colonies, and be used as propellant in nuclear steam rockets (whether fission or fusion powered);
they will contain some deuterium for fusion, and perhaps even He3; and they will have to go before we can get down to the cloudtops of Saturn for cloudharvesting.

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News! http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-rom120503.php

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Quick question regarding Saturn's rings.

I remember reading ages ago (don't remember where, unfortunately) that the rings were an ellipse shape (as one would expect from any orbiting body), but that Saturn was in the center of this ellipse instead of at one of the two foci. Is this accurate? If so, could I get a quick explanation?

Thanks,

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IIRC, isn't Phobos inside Mars's Roche limit? I wonder if it will hit one of Hoagie's "cities?"

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The relative mass of Saturn versus any orbiting body and the sheer size means that the orbits would be near circular and the foci would be too close to tell.

I'm guessing.